Altona Magic’s first finals campaign in the National Premier League has come to an end as the first hurdle.
The Magic suffered a 5-0 defeat to reigning premiers Oakleigh Cannons on Friday night.
The game was over quickly with Oakleigh being 4-0 up after just 26 minutes. The first three goals of the game came to Alex Salmon, before he added another goal in the 55th minute to put his side up 5-0.
To make matters worse, Magic was down to 10 men from the 77th minute mark following a red card to Daniel Duzel.
Although the finals series didn’t pan out the way coach John Markovvski would have dreamt he is staying positive and is optimistic about the clubs future.
“The pressure of finals and the naivety of youth, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t,” he said.
“We can build on it. The boys have done really well, making finals with a bunch of kids is a positive and now we’ve just got to build on it.
“We’ve had a good year, and hopefully it’s a good learning curve.”
With about 14 players turning over in the off season, the year was always going to be a learning experience after finishing in 10th last year.
The club also had the golden boot winner with Jonas Markovski scoring 19 goals for the season.
“We’ve got to build from what we’ve got at the moment,” he said. “Try and strengthen up a little bit where we need it.
“When you’re playing against teams like Oakleigh that have a lot of experience. They’ve probably got 20 players that are experienced, I don’t think any of our boys have actually played a game of finals.”
Markovski said some more squad turnover can be expected in the off season to not only keep his side in finals but to take that crucial next step.
“You’re always looking to improve the team, we’ll be definitely looking at improving what we need,” he said.
“We’ll look at what we need to strengthen the plan for next year to move to the next level.
“The way things panned out this year, we had a lot of injuries in our defence, so maybe we’ll look in that area.
“We’ll just see how it pans out when we start training in pre season.”
Oakleigh play South Melbourne on Friday night to see them into the grand final, while Melbourne Knights face Avondale on Saturday in the other semi final.
Harper Sercombe
